1. Technical Field
Embodiments of this disclosure relate to an image forming apparatus, such as a copier, a printer, or a facsimile machine, equipped with a heat fixing device.
2. Related Art
In a typical electrophotographic image forming apparatus equipped with a heat fixing device, a toner image formed on a recording medium is subjected to heat and pressure via a fixing member to cause fusion or swelling in at least a part of a resin component of toner forming the toner image, thereby fixing the toner image on the recording medium. The heat fixing device is capable of providing a high fixed image quality at a high fixing speed, and thus is preferably used.
The image forming apparatus may include a cooling device that cools the toner on the recording medium heated by the heat fixing device.
In a commonly used image forming apparatus, toner images formed with toners of multiple colors, such as yellow, magenta, cyan, and black, (hereinafter referred to as process color toners) are superimposed on a recording medium and fixed thereon by a fixing device to obtain a color image.
With increasingly diversified image qualities in recent years, some image forming apparatuses employ a toner other than the process color toners to obtain high value-added prints unobtainable with normal process color toners. An example of the toner other than the process color toners is a colorless clear toner (also referred to as transparent toner, colorless toner, achromatic toner, or pigmentless toner). For example, some image forming apparatuses apply a high gloss clear toner over the entirety or a desired part of a color image print and fix the high gloss clear toner thereon with a fixing device, to thereby provide gloss to the entirety or the desired part of the print.